GSR 960 & 961 - Ethics & the Ethical Conduct of Research Involving Humans
As a graduate student, all graduates are required to take these two ethics courses as a part of their masters program, regardless of the course, project or thesis route taken. Each course is a seminar course that requires you to work through modules online. Each module has questions at the end that test your understanding of ethical issues in research. At first I was unsure of how applicable this course would be to me as I was taking the course-based route and was not planning on conducting any research. At the time I started this course I was also taking an educational research course and as I took both courses I began to see the relevance that ethics plays in all levels of work, from academic honesty to ensuring that all research undertaken is of the highest ethical standards and works to protect all involved.
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I enjoyed reading about different ethical issues, like the Stanford Prison Experiment, which opened my eyes to how failing to be ethical can have dire consequences. Through taking these courses I gained a greater respect for ethics and the hard work that thesis students at both the masters and PhD level go through in order to ensure their research meets the highest standards put forth through the Tri-Council Policy Statement.
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These two courses were two of four that I was taking in the fall of 2016 and I found that I was able to complete them in the course of a week. This was relieving since the other two courses I was undertaking that fall, ERES 800 and ETAD 802 were quite challenging.